Full Size Spare

Okay I know a few TDI's came with full size spares and some can with compacts.

Ours came with a compact and I'm looking for a full size steel wheel spare, what do you think the best options are? Vortex? local dealer?

Anyone willing to shave a few onces and trade me your full size steel wheel for my compact?

I've always gone to Discount Tire for my full size spares. I got a cheap 17" steel rim from them for my Altima years ago for $20, got a replacement for the truck 6 months ago for $50. It took 2 days for both to come in but that is hard to beat those prices.

740: Do you pick up a new Passat? Care to change your signature to reflect that?
I'm looking to do the same wheel replacement. I like kydsid's idea and will try that route.

740GLE said:

Okay I know a few TDI's came with full size spares and some can with compacts.

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Say what? They randomly came with different size spares?

...I think he meant Jettas and JSWs...

Call a junkyard. Most wrecked cars have at least a couple good wheels with tires, and most of those are recycled and not sold. So should be pretty low cost.

740GLE said:

Okay I know a few TDI's came with full size spares and some can with compacts.

Ours came with a compact and I'm looking for a full size steel wheel spare, what do you think the best options are? Vortex? local dealer?

Anyone willing to shave a few onces and trade me your full size steel wheel for my compact?

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Happy you posted this, I have been wondering the answer to this myself. Please let me know what you end up doing, I would like to get a full size spare too.

I bought a 16" alloy rim and tire from TireRack to use as my spare.

Does a full size fit in the trunk spare wheel well?

i took a peak see when we picked it up and the depth def looked like it was there.

I think the foam tool holder might have to be reformed/squshed depending on the size of the full size

Yes the full-size spare will fit. But it is necessary to trim the foam tool holder a bit. That is what I did.

I can't imagine that the weight would be that much more on a full-size wheel, but I know that VW was likely going for weight reduction with the donut.

I may look into finding a spare wheel when the time comes to get good rubber to replace the Kooks.

I think VW was trying to save the cost of matching alloy wheels and tires. At least they went with a donut instead of a blow-your-own fold-up or can of pressurized stop-leak like Audi has often done.

Just curious, since I've never had a flat, why is this an issue? I mean, it would seem the chances of a flat are no more than the chances of many other things, yet we don't carry all those spare parts around.

I'd rather have a smaller spare tire/wheel in a smaller well so that they could make the fuel tank BIGGER. Now THAT I actually could use.

Any car I have ever owned that came with a full sized tire usually meant that tire was taken off and put into rotation or whatever and replaced with something else. My B5 got its new Michelin taken off and put on another Jetta I had so I only had to buy 3 new tires (the Passat's spare was replaced with a cheapo crappy Wal-mart type tire, since it likely won't get used anyways).

OH, that's pretty amazing, no flats!!

In Hurricane country, after a big storm roofing nails everywhere. I've had five or six plugs in a single tire. Sometimes kept two spares. Air tank and a good plug kit. Squirt bottle with Dawn to find the (offending) nail.

A truck loaded with shingles going down the road, hits a bump, and you can see the nails bouncing out onto the road.... Grrr.

oilhammer said:

Just curious, since I've never had a flat, why is this an issue? I mean, it would seem the chances of a flat are no more than the chances of many other things, yet we don't carry all those spare parts around.

I'd rather have a smaller spare tire/wheel in a smaller well so that they could make the fuel tank BIGGER. Now THAT I actually could use.

Any car I have ever owned that came with a full sized tire usually meant that tire was taken off and put into rotation or whatever and replaced with something else. My B5 got its new Michelin taken off and put on another Jetta I had so I only had to buy 3 new tires (the Passat's spare was replaced with a cheapo crappy Wal-mart type tire, since it likely won't get used anyways).

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Ditto.

The issue "out West" is that you may be hundreds of miles from a tire shop when a flat occurs. Having a spare that should be driven below 50mph for up to 50 miles is a joke. And, unless you are near the Coast when the flat happens, you would not be able to find a 235/45R18 replacement for days. So try to explain that situation to the wife in the middle of your family vacation!

ColoradoDriver said:

The issue "out West" is that you may be hundreds of miles from a tire shop when a flat occurs. Having a spare that should be driven below 50mph for up to 50 miles is a joke. And, unless you are near the Coast when the flat happens, you would not be able to find a 235/45R18 replacement for days. So try to explain that situation to the wife in the middle of your family vacation!

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So, when you pack YOUR bags for vacation, pack a few things for your car. I take an extra liter of oil, coolant, couple fuses, headlamp bulbs, etc. along with me on long trips. You can throw an extra full-sized wheel/tire in there, too!

Seriously, though, I guess because I've driven all over the country multiple times in multiple cars, and have personally covered well over a million miles of driving without ever getting a flat I just am not all that concerned.

Since I am in the auto service industry, and a tire retailer, I see a LOT of flat tires. Vast majority of them could have been avoided if the people didn't run the tires so thin, and many are just slow leaks that could be limped along with some added air here and there until they can have it checked/repaired.

You can also avoid many problems buy just keeping the tires properly inflated, which is something many Americans must be incapable of, because our nanny state gov't mandated TPMS a couple years ago.

But rest assured, if I am ever crossing Death Valley and get a flat, my opinion is open for change.

oilhammer said:

...But rest assured, if I am ever crossing Death Valley and get a flat, my opinion is open for change. ...

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This^^^!!!

Camping trip, DC-CO-TX-DC...hot summer of 2010, Toyota Tundra, pulling my 2500lb. popup, with 28k miles on the popup tires. Over 1/2 tread left, ALWAYS at 50psi, no visible cracks/issues.

I lost one tread in WV, the other in Kansas. BOTH tires failed within 1k miles of each other...

Silly me...I had brought 2 new spares, mounted. Minor inconvenience...

How's your opinion now? (I do agree that the donut spare is adequate for every day driving)

tdiatlast said:

This^^^!!!

Camping trip, DC-CO-TX-DC...hot summer of 2010, Toyota Tundra, pulling my 2500lb. popup, with 28k miles on the popup tires. Over 1/2 tread left, ALWAYS at 50psi, no visible cracks/issues.

I lost one tread in WV, the other in Kansas. BOTH tires failed within 1k miles of each other...

Silly me...I had brought 2 new spares, mounted. Minor inconvenience...

How's your opinion now? (I do agree that the donut spare is adequate for every day driving)

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Yes, but how old were those tires?

And trailer tires are mostly JUNK.

oilhammer said:

So, when you pack YOUR bags for vacation, pack a few things for your car. I take an extra liter of oil, coolant, couple fuses, headlamp bulbs, etc. along with me on long trips. You can throw an extra full-sized wheel/tire in there, too!

Seriously, though, I guess because I've driven all over the country multiple times in multiple cars, and have personally covered well over a million miles of driving without ever getting a flat I just am not all that concerned.

Since I am in the auto service industry, and a tire retailer, I see a LOT of flat tires. Vast majority of them could have been avoided if the people didn't run the tires so thin, and many are just slow leaks that could be limped along with some added air here and there until they can have it checked/repaired.

You can also avoid many problems buy just keeping the tires properly inflated, which is something many Americans must be incapable of, because our nanny state gov't mandated TPMS a couple years ago.

But rest assured, if I am ever crossing Death Valley and get a flat, my opinion is open for change.

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I used to travel 100 miles a day commuting to work. I got a slow leak running over a rake that fell off a back of a landscaping trailer, 2 miles from home.

Just as I pulled into my spot TPMS light went off, and got out of the car heard the Psssst of leaking air. Tires has 30K on them and at the time had about 30K of tread left.

I took the rim off poped on the full size spare, took the tire to get plugged. Tire shop botched the remounting of the tire after the plug, gouged the rim all to crap, gave me $100 bucks and didn't charge for the plug, I was happy. I then had to wait until I either had the rim fixed or sourced a replacement rim off vortex (bioline). I bought another bioline, had the bad tire from the vortex bioline transfered to the bad rim and placed my good tire on it. I've put 20K miles on the patched tire without an issue.

All in all, mixing in waiting for the rim to ship and swapping of tires, I had my spare tire on and accumulated around 1500 miles at whatever speed I wanted. Yeah I could have delt with it differently, but I did it in my spare time and the way I wanted to because I knew I didn't have to get a proper sized tire on asap. Plus now I have a bioline with some damage for a spare, and it only cost me $30.

It's nice to have options so you're not forced into a situation you don't want to be in.

If I worked at a tire place or as a wrench turner, I'm sure I'd have different outlook on this than I do.

oilhammer said:

Yes, but how old were those tires?

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4 years old, and NOT junk...Goodyear Marathons, made in New Zealand...always stored indoors in the winter, off the trailer...

so THERE...your turn...

Well, in my book Goodyear = junk, no matter which ones or how old. But my book is of course not the most coveted reading material for all.

(BTW, I have purchased 3 brand new Volkswagens that had Goodyear tires, all of which had them removed before 100 miles... I hate them that much).

Oh YEAH? Well...the Goodyear Eagle LS-2s (235/45-17) that I purchased cheap from the dealer (take-offs...maybe they were your's?) ARE...in fact...several steps abovee junk, except they look cool and roll just fine. They also allow me to count every single piece of aggregate in the pavement while I drive...

Seriously, I believe the Goodyear Marathon is a notch or 2 above Carlisle or Duro...my opinion, of course...

OH, when you say you have never had a flat, does that also mean you have never even had your tires punctured? Or does it literally mean that you have never ignored a problem with your tire to the point that nearly all the air was gone? If it is the first, consider yourself very lucky. With all the hail around here, I know a lot of people have punctured tires from roofing nails.

You get hail that includes roofing nails? Wow...

I've had two broken tire belts in 10 years on my Jetta.

The first on a Michelin MXV (OE on the car!), the second a Uniroyal, both on the front, about six years apart. The Uniroyal failed this summer in fairly-extreme heat conditions, on the highway, 700 miles from home on a trip. Neither provided any warning before it happened and neither tire was either underinflated or overinflated at the time or at any time during the tire's life. Alignment was fine then and is fine now and in between the two events I wore out an intervening set of tires "the old fashioned way" without incident. I was within easy range of a tire store in both cases and replaced the offending rubber bits.

Had I not been in easy range of said tire store, attempting to drive at highway speeds with a broken belt in a radial is asking for the tire to fail catastrophically, and on the front axle that is not fun.

I have a full-size spare in the spare tire well and if I had not been within easy driving range of a tire store when those events happened, I would have had to use it "in anger" to continue to somewhere that I could get a replacement tire. And yes, I check the inflation level of that spare every couple of months and also have a 12v compressor (it's cheap but it's small and works) in the back.

A decade or so ago when I owned a Volvo on the streets of Chicago I had the pleasure of being on Addison and the vehicle ahead of me narrowly missed an open manhole cover. I had no where to go as there was traffic on one side and parked cars on the other with a third vehicle up my taillights -- that destroyed both passenger side wheels and tires.

Unfortunately, I only had one spare and that resulted in a tow.

I think that I've had at least one flat on every car that I've owned with the exception of the Gelf and Passat and I haven't owned them long enough. Last one was a roofing nail in my left rear on the JSW. And yes, the nail came from the hail storm ;p Didn't want to replace all four tires and took calling all three VW dealers to find the Hankook replacement.

Two tires blew on the highway. One from age and the other from a piece of angle iron laying in the middle of the road. Took a chunk out of the tire about the size of a fifty cent piece.

wanted to add, that I always look for a full sized spare or at least determine if it will fit into the hole. Hole is too small on the Golf with the 17" tires and has been too small on the Toyotas that I've owned.

TomJD said:

OH, when you say you have never had a flat, does that also mean you have never even had your tires punctured? Or does it literally mean that you have never ignored a problem with your tire to the point that nearly all the air was gone? If it is the first, consider yourself very lucky. With all the hail around here, I know a lot of people have punctured tires from roofing nails.

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I've never had to use a spare tire, let's put it that way. I have had a couple times where the tire was a little low, so I investigated it right away and remedied the problem.

The only time my 1991 Jetta's spare has been out was when I waxed the inside of the spare tire well, about two weeks after I bought the car. That's IT. 440,000 miles later, still never been budged.

My 1987 Mazda pickup went to 404k miles, its original spare rusted in place some time in the early '90s. It never moved, ever. Even when I removed the bed in 2000 to weld the frame back together, I thought about cutting it out, but figured it was at least good for some ballast weight behind the rear axle. I did, however, throw an extra wheel/tire in the bed for cross-country trips, but only because I knew my spare was permarusted in place.

With our farm purchase outside of Belle, I've been driving at least an extra 100 miles or so every weekend, in addition to my normal 600+ miles a week... maybe I am tempting fate, but still no flats!